- A health-care worker in Alaska was admitted to the emergency room
- Some doses for California, Alabama held up for being too cold
The person was admitted to the emergency room and was given Pepcid, Benadryl and epinephrine through an intravenous drip.
The patient stayed overnight and is in stable condition, according to the Alaska health department.
The episode follows reports of a handful of similar reactions in the U.K., where health officials advised that anyone with a history of severe allergies shouldn’t take the Pfizer vaccine.
U.S. regulators recommended last week that people should be monitored for allergy symptoms for 15 minutes after getting the shot, which gained an emergency-use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration on Friday.
Pfizer is coordinating with local officials, will closely monitor all reports suggesting serious allergic reactions and will update labeling language if needed, spokeswoman Jerica Pitts said in a statement.
The incident came to light as the first hiccups in the distribution of the vaccine in the U.S. emerged on Wednesday, including a holdup in delivering 3,900 shots to two states and the announcement that Pfizer would deliver about 900,000 fewer doses next week than are set to ship this week.
Operation Warp Speed has said it expects to have enough vaccines between Pfizer and Moderna to inoculate 20 million Americans in December.
It has contracted for 100 million doses of Pfizer’s vaccine, which requires two shots per patient.
Azar and other officials pushed back on recent reports that the U.S. government declined to purchase more doses from Pfizer, saying the company couldn’t guarantee they’d be ready by mid-2021 …
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